Proprietary NVidia drivers causing M3 to bootloop

[affectiosus]

After installing M3 I wanted to get the proprietary NVidia drivers for Compiz to work (it won't with default nouveau), but here's a problem. If I do this from mcc (see the screenshot), system going into a bootloop. It can't reach the login screen, just a huge output of text and then a terminal window with a message like "System has to be rebooted due to desktop driver change" with "OK" and "Cancel" buttons on it. I'm pressing OK, but nothing changes. Did a clean install, then installed "x11-driver-video-nvidia-current" with dependencies - same thing. Haven't tried to install drivers from NVidia site (btw they are a bit newer then available in repos).
So what should I do to get either Compiz or proprietary drivers to work? Thanks to everyone in advance. My card is GTX560Ti.

[doktor5000]

Please show the output of

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rpm -qa | grep -e nvidia -e kernel | sort

[affectiosus]

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[affectiosus@Mageia ~]$ rpm -qa | grep -e nvidia -e kernel | sort
kernel-desktop-3.8.13.4-1.mga3-1-1.mga3
kernel-desktop-latest-3.8.13.4-1.mga3
kernel-firmware-20130307-2.mga3
kernel-firmware-nonfree-20130307-1.mga3.nonfree
nvidia-current-doc-html-319.17-1.mga3.nonfree
nvidia-current-kernel-3.8.13.4-desktop-1.mga3-319.17-7.mga3.nonfree
nvidia-current-kernel-desktop-latest-319.17-7.mga3.nonfree
x11-driver-video-nvidia-current-319.17-1.mga3.nonfree

[doktor5000]

Well, i'd go with the dkms version of the driver, but anyways.
Please show the output of

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grep nvidia /etc/X11/xorg.conf
grep nokmsboot /proc/cmdline

and

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modprobe nvidia

(latter as root)

[affectiosus]

First command returns nothing, second too.

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[root@Mageia affectiosus]# modprobe nvidia
modprobe: FATAL: Module nvidia not found.

[doktor5000]

So nothing in your system is set up for the nvidia driver, and the nvidia kernel module doesn't exist.

For the proprietary drivers to install, you have undergone the process which is depicted by the screenshot in your initial post?
Meaning completed to the end, where it asks you to save the new configuration?

[affectiosus]

Yes. Then it asks me to reboot to save changes, and then - bootloop.

[affectiosus]

I found this guide on mageialinux.ru. Tried to follow it, but failed on installation - installer said that nouveau is still in use by my system. I translated it myself, sorry if smth wrong.

[rickst29]

The problem might be a failure to even get Nouveau/Plymouth working - mine was. In this case, Nouveau fails to even start running the Plymouth Bootsplash (of the REAL Linux, not the graphical Grub or Lilo chooser). Mageia's mechanism to "hand off" to NVidia doesn't even get a chance to run. Pressing "Esc" during the very beginning of the process allowed me to see Nouveau-DRM was failing with a "bad ROM parameters" error. My workaround is/was to eliminate use of Nouveau, and you can do it pretty easily, with a pretty GUI - by using the installer DVD GUI "configure your system" step to disable the video option "Boot in Graphical Mode".

Loadup your installer DVD, and "upgrade to Mageia 3" (yes you're upgrading from Mageia 3 toMageia 3, it won't be doing much of anything).
You'll accept the lcense, choose your keyboard, and then it will skip over partitioning, installation, and adding users. When you get to the screen to configure system stuff, it might make you reconfigure your Network (if fixed addressing is in use), go ahead and do that first. (Your fixed addressing values are already in there, you just click through it and the red "Not Configured" highlight becomes resolved.)

Next, with or without having "fixed" the Network, go press the button to configure your video (X-Server). Select the Graphics card. After selecting the NVidia card level, click the choice of using a 'Proprietary Driver' as YES.
In any case (either having tested and reloaded the install DVD, returned to "configure your Video" -- or skipping the test, you're still setting and verifying Video options) do the workaround: Go ahead and disable the checkbox for "Boot in Graphical Mode". Nouveau will not even be loaded, and so there is no hand-off being made. (Gory details: this adds the command line option "nokmsboot" to your Linux command line parameters.)

[jiml8]

I had trouble getting the nvidia driver (downloaded from Nvidia and compiled locally) to go into place. Solved the problem by adding the line "blacklist nouveau" to the file /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-compat.conf.